well to be honest i loved every part of this course from the drawing and modeling to the workshops i am a bit annoyed that i missed the last workshop and i hope i can re do that next year.
next year i would love to see Photo shop tutorials and some for of creative writing/ storytelling as i would like to further my skills in art with words as well as pictures. i would also like to go with the group to things similar to the GDC and have a blogging session on it or go to any type of useful exhibitions as we've bin to an artist exhibition now i would like to see the games world with class mates to enjoy it with. again GDC WOULD BE GOOD! i like nearly every conference they had on except i do not really enjoy serious games as i came into thiscourse wanting to make fun games that people would want to play over and over and maybe even fix problems with some of the games out today, i wouldn't find serious games fun therefore i wouldn't be passionate.

gdccoference proceedings

Your task this week is to find something of interest in the conference proceedings, and write a small piece around it.

i was looking through all the confrences and i came across alot which i would love to go to many of which would help my knowledge on games and game making. for example i realy want to see the future of storytelling as this has become some what weak in many games titles to the point where we're seeing a lot of repetition. and fankly im getting board there is only a few new and wonderous ideas coming out and i want to see the confrences views on sequals whether they see them as money making scemes weakened by the past success and the inevitable weaker second part i.e. ff10 part 2 or as new ideas ready to be developed into that last chance 3rd title that almost never works. story telling in games keeps us hooked theres no doubt about it. this is the reason i do not play ff11, yes it does have a storyline and its supposed to be realy good but getting there is a nightmare you need to reach maximum level and get parties with other online players who are not guarenteed to be there, to pass one little stage. i mean talk about time consuming.

one of the major conferences i would love to go to is the motorstorm conference because itdelves in to a the technical physics of next gen something im truly pashionate about, physics is what i love about games these days it used to be if something is in a scene you couldn't do much to it unless it was part of the story line but now things like cups and chairs can be moved, one thing i feel makes games look more real is if they have those little things we take for granted in real life. if we take something for granted in the real world, to get that sence of reality we need to take it for granted in the game world.

in short i probably would get some one to record the confrences i cant go to just so i could get a glimpse of them all. they all seem useful and exciting.

'What am I going to get out of three years at University?'

well theres 2 answers to that big question 1 is qualifications a great career and oppotunities opening up which i never thought i would get. and theres the knowledge of university life growing up and becoming an official adult with the chance to do anything i want. the biggest thing iam going to get out of these three years is the understanding of the things i love; games and the games industry ive only been here a little while but my veiws and attitudes towards games and game cultures have severily changed, i now see little details in games like low poly trying to look hight poly and i do not take for granted the details in assets as i know how hard they are to make. Back when i was in college i did not know a thing so i traveled past vast peices of comutergame art thinking nothing of it, now i stop ant look especialy in games that try to impress using new technologies ad large landscapes like oblivion, on that game i traveled to the highest point and turned up veiw distance so i could see it and it looked beautiful. iam changing as a person, from a bedroom geek playing games like crazy passing storylines and art to a real game enthusiast which is a far cry from the way i was before i came here, games mean alot more to me now. i buy game that i know will not be very good just so i can rate it and see how not to make a game im also playing genres ive hated in the past as i know i may be making these in the future even though i do not like them some people do and they need to be as good as i can make them. ive looked back on what ive done in the past not just my attitudes towards games but my work and i have recently looked back at my 3D work and it helped me alot as now ive seen all my flaws and ive ironed them out for my next project which im happy to say is coming out pretty well accoring to joel(yes praise!). in the second year i will do alot better than this year testing my limits and pushig my drawing skills so i can become the best i can for the third year were i will hopefuly be a 3d and 2d master!

But what exactly is it, and how does it manifest itself? Is creativity hindered or enhanced by technical constraints? Who 'does' creativity - the art director? The artists? Programmers? Writers?

What does creativity look like? Is it in the brand identity, think Halo or HalfLife for example, or does it live in the overall experience of play? How do games manifest creativity? Graphics? AI? Gameplay? Are there any companies or individuals who seem, to you, to be particularly creative?

As an artist, or programmer, how will you show your creativity - and how would you expect it to be acknowledged by others?

Tasks:

1. dig into the web to find what other people have to say about creativity
2. write your blog entry considering the issues raised above

creativity can be known as the measure of talent or in our feild creativity could be when you make something new something not seen before thats creativity, if you can take things that exist and make something new out of it, if you can get ideas from everyday things you see all the time and make something from it you are creative. in the theasaurus creative means imaginative and furtile, to be full of ideas to think of things no other person would. imaginative people think in a completely different way to most other people they see usefull things in everything. a simple crisp packet could be part of a character in a film to a creative person.

technology helps in a big way for creativity as it makes the job so much easier and fun, i dont know what the world would be like without photoshop or even a pc, the games industry would probably not exist at all, but you could also say without creativity we wouldnt have the technology today it takes imagination and creativity to come up with things like the pc or photoshop, even a simple thing as the pencil.

you can not place a lable on who is the creative one in a games team because its the team thats creative, if you took one specialist out of the team the team will fall apart, each person is creative in there own feild and thats what makes a great game great film, great artist in genaral.

creativity is in everything. everything has thought gone into it from the carpet at your feet to the keyboard im typing this out with. without some ones imagination and creativity things may not have worked in the way they do now. the brand name and corperate identity to half-life was thought out usein the imagination of alot of creative people so yes creativity is in brand identities but it does live within' the game aswell to a larger extent as there are games out there where the brand identity was made on microsoft word and dumped on the cover, every person working on a game is creative if they weren't then there would be alot of boring buggy games out there.
every different specialist focuses on there field with there passion and creativity so there is creativity bursting out of every part of the game.

there are alot of talented and creative people out there from artists in many fields such as music painting, scientists .... my favourite musician would have to be steve vai as he can create a song from nowere on his own with a simple instrument. bacon as he can make a person look like a peice of meat and that is what we are he can perfectly describe people and objects with ease.

Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can?t both be right can they?

How can education meet these opposing views and yet provide a valid and fulfilling experience to students?

Tasks:

1. trawl the web to research more on these issues
2. write your blog entry, and discuss your findings and your personal views on this issue

these requirments are usualy specific to a certain company and these opposing veiws can only be solved in two ways either let the pupil choose which he or she prefers depending on what company she or he wants to get into or give the pupil both types of teaching. either way has good and bad points for example teaching both types makes the learner weaker in both subjects its like many things today for example on an rpg if you choose to multiclass you will be weak at both due to the deminished amount of levels for each class. this brings us to the fulfilling part as the weakening in both tpes of teaching its hardly a fulfiling course.
i feel there should be a course for each type giving a focust teaching enviornment but also a choice in which to graduate to or from my time in multimedia at college i started out doing everything you posibly could then as the second year came round i got the choice to choose which i liked most an focust on that subject my choice was 3d animation this could also be applied the try before you bye aproach.

this would be so much easier if games companies just chose poeple who were good at making GAMES not people who fit into there criteria, at the end of the day its all about the quality of games and thats it even to the corprate poeple who are just in it for the money not entertainment get money from good games so to be honest all games comanies need to do is choose skill over qualifications. if i was a qualified musicion with a certificate going up for a job against an awsome musician i would loose because at the end of the day its what comes out at the end, great music great games, great product!

ive trawled the web and magazines to find what games companies want and its skill and knoledge.. they ask for skill in programs, knowlege of games and the companies past succeses, so if your just a geek at home with no qualifications but know how to use a program or you can draw well draw well then you can get a job, just show you can work hard and your in so different teaching styles do not mean anything really just your skill and know how.

How is sound used in games? Who are some of the ket composers working in games? What are your key sonic moments in your gaming history? And is it true that the Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards composition 'Good Times' is the most influential recording made in the 20th Century?


sound brings atmosphere and tension it hightens mood and game pace, it makes a game worth playing, have you ever got to a part on halo were your a bit tired and feel like saving and quiting but then u here that feint sound in the background then it gets louder adn louder and the heavy steve via riff comes into play egging u to move on, makes you sit up and wanna squash those alien scum. i love that tune made me play that game like crazy and i loved it so much that i learned to play it on guitar. there are also tunes in games that arnt actual songs just ambient sounds which change the mod of the area especially when you pass from a large open bright safe place to an eerie dark secluded dungeon. on alot of games especialy oblivion and neverwinter nights 2 i changed some of the music files so i can go into battle with heavy metal music making me wanna bash the skulls of goblins or rip apart a low armoured archer until the musci fades away and im standing there victorious then the slow ambient music comes on after the battle calming me down and taking me out of the frenzied state of barberionism (i think u just made up a word) music can also indicate whats coming round the corner and start your adrenalin pumping for the fight ahead, for example in fear i was walkin towards a shut door and music started playing and my heart started mumping the......BANG!!... the door ripped of its hinges and a fully armoured soldier with a nail gun popped out with 2 other soldiers brandishing shjotguns, i quickly chucked on granades and burst into slow mo dodging bullets while lobbing explosives but this guy kept coming making me wish i had it on easy, all this time heavy metal music in my ears making me go crasy in slow mo as soldiers heads flew off from my shotgun bursts at point blank range. man that was exciting.

one great composer of games is steve horowitz, he has made music for sony, sega and many titles for nickalodeon like Sponge bob; Dora The Explorer; Jimmy Neutron and Joe from "Blues Clues"
kojo kondo is another great composer as he made all the well known tunes from every mario game and every zelda games.
Nobuo Uematsu, composer of the much loved Final Fantasy games series music he is so well known that all his music was played at walt disney concert hall in may 2004.

there are many composers out there alot with very good titles under there belt and alot with not so many but to see real great composition you need to check out composers from many diferent companies and many differen countries, but to be honest great composers is down to taste for example people might like the music from silent hill created by Akira Yamaoka but some may not in my opinion the music and soundtrack is one of my alltime favourites but other poeple might disagree and like music from say Sponge Bob Square Pants, its all down to taste.

1. find and review links on Game Engine Technology
2. write your blog entry considering the following questions:

What does a game engine do? What are the key engine technologies? What is meant by subtractive and additive? What are the advantages and disadvantages of buying into proprietary technology? What seem to be the key issues for 'next-gen' game engines?



game engines are basicly a bunch of code putting all the fine gamplay and details together. it regulates things like say ragdoll effects or simple animations. it turns your polygon lifless characters and objects into an interactive element capable of creating an interactive universe were a story can progress. its the morter to the wall. game engines can also vary for example a game engine can be made to make simple game charectersistics work like a flame in the unreal engine it has the coding to implament that but if you want say many moving treas that are interactive you would need a new engine to do that for example the cryengine designed for farcry it was made to implament key charecteristics that the game needed to make it unique. game engines can run the basic elements to make it playable but as we are starting to see now more games are become unique requiring specialised game engines another one of these is the fear engine helping you have that slow motion effect with particles flying everywere more like a matrix film than the matrix games lol. the technologies are becoming more specialised but all game engines need things like 2D 3D renderers or there would be no visual elements they need to be able to implament animation sound basic script to detail charecters or objects acts and speach.

well i watched the vids to fear a while ago and one guy said it was being able to see your body in real time first person, to look down and see your feet is a good thing its in many newish titles like fear, condemned, dark massiah, but at the moment im guessing better phyisics and better graphics if things look real and things act real then youll get a better imersive game, totally a next gen quallity i would like to see also more inteligent ai is a big thing with game engines and with new technology coming out offering bettter proccesing power then the AI in games is set to skyrocket. i would also love to see things like being able to do anything you want in an enviornment, if a tree is infront of me i want to be able to climb it if a flower is next to me i want to be able to pick, in other words interactivity needs to get better and this leads back to the new processing power which should broaden the horizons of interactivity and inturn gameplay itself.

http://www.knowledge.hut.fi/projects/games/gamelinks.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?toplevel=2
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?toplevel=3

Tasks:

1. review some of these links and
2. write your blog entry considering the following questions:

What game cultures are you part of? How much of your life does it occupy? Do you have friends who you know only through MSN for example?

game cultures well i think to be honest ive been part of many over the years the biggest game culture ive been part of is the mix of many game cultures known as the online gaming comunity i play many games online from 1st person shooters to beat 'em ups to strategy they all have tere own culture i was part of a modding culture that exploded from half-life 1 i fooled around with the hl1 editor but rarly came up with much just me and my friend making cube rooms full of loads of monsters and loads of big guns i never got round to the technical side of it ie coding as i did not know were to start now i fool around with the TES4 engine for oblivion which ive now found an exporter for 3ds max were i may be able to import things like my bin or new monsters. it rarely takes up my time as iam to busy doing work for uni or drawing or getting drunk as i have found out iam taged with the party students who dont do much work lol. it used to take up alot of my time as i would finish school at 4 and me and my modder friend would go round his house as i did not have the net at that time and we would mod half-life while eating fast food just like the sterio typical computer geek except ive taken it further and he is just on the dole maybe that A in maths did set us apart.

there are people i only know through msn as i find on games like rpg's you stand around alot and talk its like a giant chat room were sooner or later you will get the odd friend. it also sometimes happens to me on fps but maybe its just me but does anyone realy talk nicly on fps's because i mainly just get the words noob, hacker, cheater shouted over a low signal mic from an american that cant take it when i pawn his ass at counter-strike the moronic noobs hehe. msn is a large culture if your not part of it there is alot of the world and alot off people your missing out on yeah maybe there are many idiots but thats just mainly americans(yes i hate em) with no social lives, i just use block and delete work for me.

How is the industry doing? What are employee?s views of working in the industry? What are the biggest challenges facing the industry at the moment? How might these challenges impact on the industry in the near future?


the industry is doin well appart from a few mistakes on the hardwares side i.e. ps3 price and the wii's low stock but apart from that the industry is still coming up with new games axcept not many ar original they are relying on the hardware for more originality for example using new and better graphics to make there game original or for the wii there is the style of interactivity which to me seems very stupid. There isn't much new and exciting ideas out at the moment for exaple i will take the new game gears of war yes sure its fun but its over done, its just a mix between the coman aliens vs huumans scenario mixed with a war time scenario whats new, everything in that game is old news again the only good thing thats reasanably new is the online play with split screen were you and a friend can battle together but this again is relying on hardware nothing to do with the game creation. these days originality is more focust on graphics and being able to play with people in other players via the net. there is hope however as the new hardware is getting to the point that we will soon be seing better more officent A.I. for example the quad core proccesors were spoken about in conjunction with half- life creators and they spoke of the use of multiple proccesors to give more random acts for people I.E if morgan freeman sat down with a zombie and they both started to play chess each proccesor acts like a brain for each charecter, so they would actually have a real game of chess fighting to beat each other or even cheat if they wanted, more proccesors means more brain power for our upcoming AI these proccesors were even said to be making graphics cards obsolete but obviously thats a stupid remark because a processor could not create the realistic visuals as well as a graphics card i mean when i buy a sound system or an aplifier for my guitar i try to get seperates as they seperate parts are designed to fullfill 1 function no more meaning they would not be overrun with alternate proccessors, (were do they get there ideas from, the morons).

i read an article on a major artis/developer and his views were to not bog yourself down with how much money your getting or whether your company is talanted its about learning use what they have and the knowledge they have to improve your own skills, if there is a talented well developed company that wants you but there small and have not shipped many titles and a low talented company that have shifted many titles go for the one you will learn most from especially if your new in the industry. its all about improving your own skills not the portfolio of the company your in because your not always going to be working for that company.

the biggest chalenges for companies these days is compatiotion by far as there is so many games consoles out there and so many games titles that games developers find it hard to choose the best console for there game and same on the other side if say sony didn't have games like silent hill, resident evil devil may cry 3, METAL GEAR SOLID, ps3 would not sell well. the new titles make the consoles sell and that is the biggest problem as the consoles are at war to pitch for new games. another challenge i see is age groups because there is only a small portion of older gamers out there compared to say kids. if i asked you what was the most sold game last year ou would probably say somthing like final fantasy or metal gear, but no it would be on the lines of pokemon as this is played by more game cultures, kids and adults play it making it more universal all over the globe neiches are all good and well but it doesn't make money. in the near future this could lead to more childrens games being developed we've seen it before, for example the digimon series and famous cartoon games they all came out after the boom of pokemon because people saw the profit. dont get me wrong they still will make games for us with gorre and stuff becuae that gets them awards they dnt put high poly models of sponge bob or pikachu because kids dnt notice but games for us do as we notice and its more appreciated.

gamplay im sure we have done this...week 11 :-)

Gameplay? game play? play, game. What exactly is this thing? And why is it important? Does it exist as a definable set of rules? Can it be designed into a game, or is it the random convergence of several interacting factors? Is it even important?

for game play iam going to just copy and paste what i have already said because my veiws have not changed since i wrote this peice.

"Game play is large area of gaming, it means the feeling of the game or it can mean the way a game plays, if a game plays badly its game play for example the movement system is to complex then the game play would be poor but much like a car it can be fast pace and exciting as well as sluggish and boring. It depends on the game you are playing. Different genres have different game play styles. Game play is in the name, its how the game plays, moves, feels and flows."
id like to take a moment out to tell you something one of my friends informed me of , this little thing called nintendo, the creations of nintendo against the creations of sony show cclearly how gameplay works for instance sony create psp yeah a good handheld console with lots of stuff like dvd's internet and good graphics but then you look at nintendos dual screen very interactive and good graphics guess who sold more yep nintendo, because the gameplay was better it was more fun and involving than the psp. so gamplay is an invisible force that shows how good a game is to play.

it is very important as it gives the state in which the game works and fits together, if there is bad gameplay when im driving down a street but its all an animation and im playing a driving game then that takes all the fun and meaning out of the game. if a game is meant for one perpose yet it doesnt fit that then its a bad game, gameplay makes the game work without it it falls apart just like a cog in a machine or a lightbulb in the christmas tree lights. its that one thing that holds the integraty of the game together its VITAL!

it can be a definable set of rules in some instances like a driving game if the steering isnt realistic the gameplay is bad or if the movement of the car relative to the movement of the steering is bad then the gameplay is bad. so there can be one big rule for certaingames but most of all this only works in games that need to be realistic for example if you take a fantasy game you could always blame certain aspects on its not real its fantasy but it still comes down to does it work well and to me that is a rule IT HAS TO WORK WELL like a finly tuned machine to get good gameplay and that is the rule.

it can be designed into a game if the game makers work hard but sometimes you just get that little unpredictable factor that crushes all hope of good gameplay that misstimed animation duplicated for all charecters or that rigid rag doll attept that failed at the first hurdle. gameplay can be very unpredictable when unsupervised but if averything in a game is designed perfectly then it should work just fine, but this could be the reason why games are just to fake and boxed in holding the games industry back. making a game work well needs it to be controlable and tame but to do this it needs to be on the scale to be controled serverly deminishing the options a game maker has. you cant have a massive realistic size world without a few gameplay probels because it cannot be policed and checked its just a to big task.

nintendo f***king WII

id like to make a brief acount of my anger towards the nintendo wii, yeah it looks cheep and cool but whats with the price of the contol pads it sucks and the limited amount surely they must of realised the demand for this console yet they still insisted on sending only a few out this blows bad i hate the way these companies work, usually if a console sells well you put more out but not nintendo they think totaly different from sane people. i cant get this godamn console anywere so how and if i could it probably would have increased in price. take for instance this well known shop gamestation, in my home town of derby, after the first rush of sales the day it came out they only had 3 left guess what they did..... yep they boomed the price to nearly 300 quid. sigh i hate this money hungry culture. ill stop now before i say something i'll regret about nintendo.

books beat films by miles, cannot beat the power of imagination

well to start and with probably with most of my co-students backing, books are far better than games or films just because of the level of detail, the way they introduce a character telling you everything about him or her but in films and games you do not get that in depth coverage. books force your imagination to create the characters and with you making up the character the character will suit you more being more scary or better looking depending on the writers description. I feel more attached to characters in books as I have partly made them up myself were as in films you get everything done for you which to be honest is boring (the imagination by far ways out the imagination of another person).
when a writer uses in depth description and detailed biography it makes you feel like you know the character also they do the complete opposite to the bad/villains of the story so you are attached to the characters that are good but far removed from the characters that are bad this makes me feel sympathy and compassion to the good guys but love it when the bad guys get hurt. but this means writers can easily make you love a bad guy just by giving you a little information on something like a bad childhood, making you feel sorry for that character.
dependent on the script! I feel story is the script you cannot make a good story without a good script. but this by far does not make the game for example fighting games like “dead or alive” or “Tekken” have very little story line but people still play them because they were made for beating the crap out of friends and the artificial intelligence not made for the story, but when you get a game like an RPG, which you are playing a role in a large story, the script is integral to the games success, the characters design and the level design become almost irrelevant, the game or film just becomes a book, a story but obviously not as detailed as a book. The acting helps convey a characters emotion and style separating him or her from other characters in the story like the to most common opposites in any story and any game, the good guy and the bad guy both so opposite they require immensely different style of acting I.e. a characterisation of evil would be slow sly movement like sneaking and skulking, where as good would be big bold movements and gentle posture. so to give the viewers more in site, the story is very dependent on the acting as it shows the characters part in the story.
I find mysterious stories very irresistible because they require a lot of thinking and they have many twist and turns also I prefer stories set in the medieval era because I like stores with chivalry and good verses evil in its plainest sense i.e. dark wizard verses gentle knight. also whenever I play a game requiring you to choose which character class i always choose knight(oblivion) or paladin(Baldur’s Gate/Neverwinter Nights1/2).

task 9

Well to be honest the best user interface is the Macintosh OSX it is so simple and that’s the way it should be, one time in college a bunch of us thought it would be fun to play the halo trial on Lan and it was the most simple thing ever to do even though we had to hack around the system we got it to work almost instantly because of the simplicity of OSX, but on the other hand have you seen the interface of Project Gothem racing it is really bad, you have to scroll through a lot of crap just to get to 1 on 1 mode its stupid, it took about 3 people to find there way around and they had all played this game before. I read this link on the net were a guy stated that the ps3 control pad(old design) was a good idea as it was designed to feel good well that’s what its all about, its not aesthetics, yeah true its ok to look good but would you buy a Ferrari with no engine. Have you noticed that all that changed in the shell of the computer console is, its got more curves and a lot smaller for the power you get so obviously if we keep going that way we would more than likely end up with a console shaped like a sphere and that size of an atom, well probably not but its fun to dream.

In the future I perceive that people will interact with consoles with there whole body not just a control pad or head gear. Full engrossed gaming with every sense used and for one you will not have the stupid robotic movement like in most first person games you neck will not be clamped to the character like he has a neck brace. The joy stick has been dying for along time as a personal thing I hate the joystick I prefer mouse and keyboard as it gives more control. Consoles are changing so much people have already started on virtual reality, if that got better and they used it to make games with graphics equal to reality then that would change the way people play games immensely as people would be more engrossed because they become part of the game instead of just a puppet master.

debate on story eh! cant we just shoot each other instead(BF2142)

The story of games is the most integral part of a game without an in depth story there would be no game, the story is what keeps a gamer going through the intense and challenging level, if your stuck behind a wall with a barrage of gunfire blocking your way, its not will I ever get past this section of the game keeping you going its what’s in store for me when I get to the next section will that guy I’ve been chasing since the start of the game be finally in my crosshairs or will I have to take down a gigantic boss will 12 legs and a flame throwing head. I have played many games were the story is rather boring an I have played all the way through them just in hope of the story line picking up but to my dismay it didn’t and I never play it or speak of it again other than to discredit it to other gamers. There are games out there that seem to have little story to them but are there just for graphics or a little bit of fun most of these games are usually sequals made just for obtaining more money off the back of the first games quality story line for example oblivion, also other style of games like beat’em ups they have little story line to them but we still play them for the chance to kick the crap out of people without getting a bruise or be able to do that Bruce lee flying kick that we’ve always wanted to do but cannot due to our lack of skill and fitness of a real fighter. To be honest most games I play have little story due to there genre like first person shooters (battlefield 2142) that has little story because it’s all about skill who’s the best team who’s the best shot who can run crazy around a massive map taking out every online gamer without breaking a sweat. It’s just pure fun, your not trying to find out any answers to the story and it doesn’t feel like another episode of lost were your told so much but never given any f*cking answers, it is a breath of fresh air to have a game without a major story just so you can have fun but don’t get me wrong I love playing games with story but haven’t you noticed how similar they’re getting, I thing they’re all funning out of ideas.

wow! art direction

What does an Art Director do? Who are they responsible to? Do you think it?s a creative role? How is art direction in Games similar to or different from Film, for example? What qualities do you think you?d need to develop if you want to become an Art Director in the future?



An art director controls and focuses the crew on the main aspect of a game he/she chooses the direction and style of the game, without an art director there would be no focus and with many different artists there would be many different styles making the game seem like a patchwork quilt nothing would fit or go together. Different parts of the game wouldn’t go with others and the way they feel and look would be totally out of place with the previous section of the game. Art directors keep the artists together controlling there direction and keeping them in tune with each other much like an instrument, if one string is out the whole song would be awful and out of tune. As I’ve always been told, people see the bad things easier than the good so if there is one small mistake people will see that and forget about the good aspects.

Of course it’s a creative role, art directors choose the mood and style of a game if they don’t like it its not in the game. Without a creative art director the game would be flat and lifeless, true an art director does do the boring paper work but he also has creative input in the way the artists work and what they can produce is decided by the art director.

Art direction is very much identical to art direction in a film as art directors focus the workers just like the film director, art directors control the mood and style like a film director, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if an art director could change places with a film director and pull of the same quality of work.

Being able to focus people is a big quality an art director needs, if you cant keep the artists working to the same standard and style then you are useless. Being able to convey ideas easily and quickly through speech and sketching is a useful and essential tool an art director needs, if an art director cant get across the meaning behind a game then how can the artists.

boom headshot! ha! take that gameplay!

What is meant by Game play? Who are the leading lights in Game Design? Where does Game Design take place in the modern Developer? Is it a single person's responsibility? Do different genres require different design principles? What's important for you, when you play?


Game play is large area of gaming, it means the feeling of the game or it can mean the way a game plays, if a game plays badly its game play for example the movement system is to complex then the game play would be poor but much like a car it can be fast pace and exciting as well as sluggish and boring. It depends on the game you are playing. Different genres have different game play styles. Game play is in the name, its how the game plays, moves, feels and flows.

The leading game designers is so broad that its not worth going into detail as there are many different companies that are toe on toe with each other at the top for example, Microsoft, Sony.. Which are the big companies but then I could go into actual focused game companies like Nintendo, EA, Sega, Id, Ubisoft, Square Enix. These are some of the big companies but there are more out there. You could go into subjective way of seeing this as I feel the leading lights in game design are upcoming game designers and just kids as we decide what games make it or not.

I feel different genres need different design principles as this further separates the genres. Every game needs a different style and every genre needs a different style these needs require much variety and if they had the same design principles then they would be to similar and many would not be played. No new ideas would be established if the design principles were the same that’s like creating all the films in the world off the same storyboard, its impossible.

For me my preference is on first person shooters, I require fast action game play coupled with a great in depth storyline the graphics only add to the experience they don’t make it, so they do not matter that much. Also need a large amount of atmosphere to make the game feel more real. When I run round the corner into a fire fight and pretty, greatly sculptured, beautiful landscape is being ripped to pieces by the yo-yoing fodder of the opposing forces I just want to stop and wait a moment to take it in….. at that point I’m shot in the head by an awaiting camped sniper. I need that dark destructive atmosphere I cannot find in the real world.

week five task

Review some of these links on Game Writing write your blog entry, and consider the following questions: What issues face reviewers? Who pays their wages? Is an objective ranking system for games necessary for sales is it even feasible? What are your feelings about the NGJ? What are the particular qualities of NGJ? What other forms of games writing can you find? How do you feel about your own writing, do you value objectivity or subjectivity?

Reviewing is one person’s thoughts and opinion of a game so when one person makes an opinion, so does another but that does not make either one right. One person may have a total different opinion to another and if that opinions creator is more credible than the other then the judging of the game will become bias. This rouses a point in which reviewing a game cannot be taken as fact or used to determine a games quality it can merely be used as a starting point. If I made a review on a game saying it was amazing and the graphics were superb but a well know games journalist says it was the worst game he has ever experienced, who’s opinion will be right. So the major issue facing reviewers are other reviewers.

Reviewers wages can be paid by a newspaper they work for or magazine company but there are reviewers out there who are not paid they are just gamers like me or you and have a little spare time to share there opinions on the latest news or game.

In modern day society this ranking system telling people what’s hot and what’s not on the gaming market is very important as there are many people out there who do not know anything about computer games and need a little help to choose what to buy for a friend or relative. But my opinion is that this ranking system is absurd, all it is, is a companies way of selling a product, through a bit of cash around for advertising and you can get a few more points on your games score. Its meaningless to rank a game as there are so many different aspects to take in. to me I would give project gotham racing a very low score due to the fact I hate racing games but as it shows in the review, some people like it and rate it one of the best games for 360. Rating is another way of giving an opinion, people like games for different things like graphics and game play or storyline it cannot be entirely accurate and for people to use ranking systems to decide what to buy is stupid as all your doing is buying the most popular game not necessarily the best.

Games are not just for intellectuals so when a new games journalist spews out this kind of stuff young gamers or even not so bright gamers will be thrown, to write in this way is to segregate game lovers, I think games journalism should stick to the points at hand and keep it factual, stay away from the imagination for a while games have that fantasy area covered.

New games journalism does have some good points, like it keeps in with a story feel and flows allot better due to its narrative. It is a fun way of reviewing a game and it gives a bit of excitement to an all-round boring factual look at a game. It also show that the writer has had a detailed look at the game instead of just playing it for five seconds then writing a load of dripple contesting its brilliance. NGJ can go a bit deeper into a game which cannot be found in standard games journalism. It gives a games review in a games way.

Games writing can be found in many places due to its massive world wide market, its in places like blogs discussion boards, websites build especially for it or it can be found in game online from person to person reviewing the game as they play or in a magazine devoted to the games world. Games writing is not just devoted to the games world either it also lends its ear to the world of movies and books, as we all know many books have become games and many games have become movies these all have been reviewed and written about.

I believe both opinions and facts are useful in most writings as they help give a better picture of what’s going on. Instead of focusing on one aspect of writing we must consider all points of view and all facts thrown at us in order to produce a worthwhile piece of writing. Both types of writing should be used to understand the factual point of view and the opinionated point of view.

week four task

Ah developments of modern day gaming, in this era of technology and increase in skilled game designers artists ect we are at the dawn of a new age of game development with the new machinery and programs coupled with the amazing art. Gaming is facing a big issue that all games strive to be, this big issue is realism, a lot of games that are coming out at this moment in time are made to look close to the real thing, using new engines and new techniques to draw the gamer further into there fantasy without leaving there seat. A game that shows this most is a next generation game that is not in stores yet, it looks to be the most realistic game at the moment the skins are fantastic and the way things move when you interact with them is realistic.


The games name is “Crysis”, as you can see from the photo it looks real. Another big development in modern day gaming is the use of realistic interactivity, which is shown up in many new titles one of which is Crysis were you can chop down trees run through bushes and have the leaves bounce off you realistically but its also been in games like Oblivion and earlier Morrowind picking up items and destroying items in real time is a big thing in most games at the moment. The experience of realism coupled with an immense and epic storyline makes for great gaming.

Ah pressures, we all have them and a big weight on the game makers shoulder is the price tag, creating these fantastic games may be all good fun but what about these prices, have you seen the price of the new ps3, its crazy and this echoes back to the game maker because if people can’t buy these games or cant afford the consoles or the powerful desktop computer to run them then game makers will become bankrupt. This shows that technology is moving way to fast for the average person to keep up, I don’t want to shell out hundreds of pounds to play a game that only lasts a few hours due to the immense memory usage from the intense graphics and high polygon count. It is not worth it. Also this eye candy graphics looks good but it takes away the time people spend on the story line. A great example of this is the elder scrolls set from the first games like dagger fell to oblivion the graphics and detail has increased but the in depth epic story line has vanished, I’ve seen many reviews saying elder scrolls has lost all it used to be and is nothing more that eye candy, well if that’s so it brings me back to price, I bought a brand new computer for a thousand pounds to play next generation games on and all I’m getting is great graphics but bad plot lines and quick endings.

What I want from gaming in the future is attention to detail, when a mage holds down a fireball in his hand I want to see veins popping out of is hand and when I shoot a man in the chest on an online shooter I want to see a gaping wound with blood and guts. Games have gone to the point of looking real now we need to make them feel real, they need tiny bits of movement that shows its not just a bunch of animated polygons slumped with a texture. I want it to feel like I’m running through a war zone or trekking across an immense field with my sword at my side. Games need feeling, immersion. I want to play games with hair blowing clothes moving people speaking to me with feeling not a set dialog of babble dependent on my race or class. Also a great feature for a game would be, if its in the game you can interact with it, I’m tired of walking up to a window and finding out I cant open it or climb through it. Set paths are boring and very linier when I have to get into a house I want to be able to jump through the window or climb down the chimney, I don’t want a conveniently placed guard or locked door sending me in the direction the game maker wants me to go.

A massive improvement to gaming could be more realistic real time gaming for example if I play a game for a couple of months I want to see the grass getting longer and the people getting older, when I chuck an item on the ground I want to come back a year later and its rusted or rotten. On this type of game I would go every were and any were do as much as possible, do something bad I want people talking about it on the street and guards searching for me, people need to be scared and some angry but not go to just the extremes. some people need to be more scared than others instead of people being frightened or heroic there are in betweens to emotion.

middle history of games

Tasks:

review the ‘middle’ history of computer games
write your blog entry, and consider the following questions:

What were the significant developments during this time? How were games different by the end of this period than at the beginning?

continue to map out your own personal gaming history

What was the first game you played? What was the most recent? What happened in between, and most importantly, what made you continue playing for all this time?


Ah the middle history of gaming the essentials of what makes gaming the way it is for our generation. well in my last post i went on about the start of gaming with the first ever game on the rise of a majour game company now its time for the development of gaming history.

so from university games progammed by geeks with to much spare time to the present day arival of ps3 and nintedo wii. Acourding to most sources ralph baer is an influential man in the gaming industry taking gaming from the geek scene of coding and waste of time to the home television with a game called "chase" one of the first home played games but thats just the beginning there is alot more that spawned from the great idea, which is the reason im wrighting this and the reason we're all interested in this sort of thing. But tis blog is about the middle eras so makes it hard to really choose where to start you could of given us a date "micheal powell", but i guess we're stuck with it.

one sagnificant develipment include the "Magnavox Odyssey" which was one of the first home played computer consoles created by, yes you've guessed it Ralph Baer, ill jump a head here to more interesting developments like the creation of a little known console called sega mastersystem and that freakishly fun game "alex the kid" this game was one of the first games i played and got me hooked as i was very young at the time, it was not a very influential part of gaming history but was very influentiall to me so i thought i would wright a short bit about it. heres a screenshot to give you a taste if you have not seen it before.

A big influentiall part of the 1980's is the hand held lcd screen computer games, one of the games was super smash bros melee a games played on a game and watch hand held and because of the low power needed to run these games they only required watch batteries which made games small enough to fit on the wrist like a watch.

a large part of the 1980's was the online generation taking games to the masses this spawned games which aloud more than one person to play online games like online poker and it soon spawned to online rpg's one of the biggest online played genres in the world, but they were first called mud's or "multi-user dungeons" a smaller and less detailed version of games like final fantasy 11 or runescape.

abother jump in that era was the console from nintendo called the famicom an 8 bit console spawned from america. this blast of console mayhem soon gave way to the use of game pad instead of the old arcade joystick which is still used today on many arcade systems and flight simulators but the joypad is the way of the hime computergames, my opinion is the mouse and keyboard rule for certain games were the joypad is optional for other games i.e. fighting games.

the next big mark of gaming comes with the rpg and online rpg with games like everquest and the all important squaresoft creation finalfantasy which was so called titled due to the last fantasy creation by Hironobu Sakaguchi so much hardship and failure to create the most loved series of rpg ever created. In comes the game legend of zelda created at around the same time for the NES another big game in the wide world of gaming history. 1987 was a benchmark for gaming as it was the birth time for all these influentiall games aswell as the well loved metal gear, created by hideo kojima, this game was the first ever stealth based game in the world a bench mark for gamers everywere.

The difference from 1980 to 1990 was a jump from gaming on a console in a 2D format to gaming online and 3D gaming, which was thanks to the increase power of comuters giving gamers better detail and graphics giving way to the rise of the level of detail we have today.

The most rescent game ive played shows this high level of detail with the use of large levels online playability and a 3D environment its called "Battlefield 2142" This game shows just how far we've come in the past decade as it combines all the new technologies from the history of gaming into one action packed fun game worthy of our aproval. New and powerfull storylines coupled with intense realistic graphics is whats keped me hooked to the computerscreens all this time.

well the year is 1952 and a man named A.S. Douglas created the first ever computer game on a computer made from a vacuum tube, it produced a low buget game called tic-tac-toe, it was displayed on a cathode rod display and was of very poor quality due to only being created by a small team were as in the presant day games are produced by many people with alot of money. All of which douglas did not have.

The next interactive game that was produced was made in 1958 and it was a small adaptation of tennis, it was called "tennis for two". not long later a game was made which we all know and love, called "space wars", which i still have on my pc.

In 1967 the first ever television played gamed was created, the man who created it is called ralph baer he was working for a tv company at the time which may have been his insparation for this well known idea we all take for granted now. There was many adaptations of games one of which is called computer space, made from the game space wars but the next step in the game evolution is pong the tennis like computer game made from blocks and shapes, it was createed by Nolen Bushnell and he later went on to form atari computers with ted dabney, which recently created matrix and has games under its belt like "temple of elemental evil".

skip a few years and we come to the odyssey whcih is the firs playable home console made by ralph baer with the company magnavox. games were played firstly by inventors and technitians who made them it isnt ver sagnificant due to them making them so they need testing by some one.

My first console was not my oldest console it was sega and the game golden axe which nearly everyone i have spoken to knows about. the next consol for me is the playstaion which changed me from a sega lover to playstaion which i have never changed from. the first game i played on playstation was crash bandicoot a very weird and fun game due to its unusual style of charecter much like the use of a plumber in mario. it went from there realy changing to next generation consoles like ps2 and game cube but i still played the retro consoles like comedor 64 with the cassettes.

the most rescent game ive played it oblivion one of the next generation games so far, but this game was not the one that made me change from games passing time to games being my life, this was down to baldur's gate due to its fantastic story line and being the first rpg i ever played,. It hooked me to the point of rpg's being my favourite but as time went on i changed from loving indepth story lines to loving fast pace action of online and ofline first person shooters, which i love to this day I.e battle field 2